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Antidepressants

Marijuana Blamed for Dzhokhar's Alleged Boston Bombings

Russ Belville | Posted 04.20.2013 | Crime
Russ Belville

Let's see, there are 26.1 million annual tokers, 17 million monthly tokers, and 2 million daily tokers in America. Two of them are alleged terrorists. That's literally, at best, a one-in-a-million risk.

Things You Want To Know About Psychiatric Medications But Didn't Know Who (Or How) To Ask

Lloyd I. Sederer, MD | Posted 04.19.2013 | Healthy Living
Lloyd I. Sederer, MD

I asked more than a dozen expert psychiatric colleagues, and myself, the questions they most frequently receive about psychiatric medications from people who take them or their families. Here are a dozen of those many questions; the responses are mine.

Silence of the Poets: Writers and Antidepressants

Andrew Shaffer | Posted 03.28.2013 | Books
Andrew Shaffer

It's an exercise in futility to try to hypothesize what effect antidepressants would have had on long-gone writers like Poe and Baudelaire. Whether you function or not is a more pertinent question than whether or not antidepressants or substance abuse "silences the soul."

Is it Drugs Not Guns that Cause Violence?

Hyla Cass, M.D. | Posted 04.21.2013 | Healthy Living
Hyla Cass, M.D.

Many legal cases, with closed books due to settlement, document cases of suicides and homicides in individuals who had not been violent prior to taking medication, and often they were newly prescribed or on an increased dose.

Depression Is Still a Mystery -- We Need a New Model

Deepak Chopra | Posted 04.02.2013 | Healthy Living
Deepak Chopra

The magazine ScienceNews begins a recent article on depression with a blanket judgment: "A massive effort to uncover genes involved in depression has largely failed." A general reader would probably not feel the shock waves that spread from this assessment.

It's Time to End Trial and Error Prescriptions for Mental Illnesses

George Carpenter | Posted 02.18.2013 | Technology
George Carpenter

In recent years, U.S. physicians and entrepreneurs have seen some success with the development of a powerful set of personalized medicine tools to help give physicians some of the objective information they need.

Depression: Medicate, Meditate or Both?

Elisha Goldstein, Ph.D. | Posted 02.10.2013 | Healthy Living
Elisha Goldstein, Ph.D.

Working with mindfulness and meditation in this way is only one approach that is showing encouraging results in studies for preventing relapse in patients with depression. However, there may be other ways that are supportive to you.

Jury Awards $1.5 Million in Suicide Malpractice Suit

Dr. Peter Breggin | Posted 11.27.2012 | Healthy Living
Dr. Peter Breggin

A Syracuse, N.Y. jury has awarded a $1.5 million medical malpractice verdict to the family of a man who committed suicide. I was the medical expert for the family.

How My Soul Mate Became A Ladies' Man (And Why I Loved It)

Marie Marley | Posted 01.15.2013 | Fifty
Marie Marley

At lunch with my best friend, Marsha, one day, I poured out my soul about the problems I was having with Ed, my beloved Romanian soul mate of 30 years. He had Alzheimer's and was living in a top-notch long-term care facility which specialized in the care of people with dementia.

I Breastfed the Wrong Baby

Donna Highfill | Posted 01.02.2013 | Fifty
Donna Highfill

I looked at the child I thought was Jacob. In a matter of hours he had gone from a baby with thin red hair to a baby with thick, long black hair. His seven pounds had morphed into at least ten. My Scot-Irish son had turned into an Italian. Wow, I thought, They change so fast!

Do You Have to Stay on Psychiatric Drugs Forever? No, Says Leading Psychiatrist in New Book

Martha Rosenberg | Posted 12.06.2012 | Books
Martha Rosenberg

Peter R. Breggin, M.D., has been called "the conscience of psychiatry" for his efforts to reform the mental health field.

Choosing Between Good Mood and Bad Weight

Judith J. Wurtman, PhD | Posted 12.03.2012 | Healthy Living
Judith J. Wurtman, PhD

People who become obese in association with their antidepressant or bipolar disorder treatment are not like others who struggle with eating issues all their adult life. Many of them had been thin before drug treatment; they had healthy habits.

Study Finds Many Older People Are Being Prescribed The Wrong Drugs

Posted 08.23.2012 | Fifty

One in five medications used by people older than 65 are prescribed inappropriately in primary care settings, which can cause adverse reactions, acco...

Me on Drugs

Julie Gray | Posted 10.13.2012 | Healthy Living
Julie Gray

I have been on drugs for about six years, give or take. Prozac and Buspiron. Prozac for depression and Buspiron for its evil twin sister, anxiety. There were others, too. I can't remember how I got started on them -- well, we can surmise I was depressed.

WATCH: How To Treat Depression, From Dr. Oz

Posted 10.09.2012 | MarloThomas

Emmy Award-winning doctor, television host and author Dr. Oz revealed some surprising facts about treating depression when he met with me on Mondays W...

Psychiatry: Start Listening to Your Patients and Their Families

Dr. Peter Breggin | Posted 08.10.2012 | Healthy Living
Dr. Peter Breggin

On the face of it, medication compliance makes sense. Patients should take their medications as instructed and families should ensure that they do. But is it that simple?

Autopsy Reveals 3 Antidepressants In Mary Kennedy's System

AP | Posted 07.07.2012 | New York

VALHALLA, N.Y. -- The estranged wife of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had three antidepressants but no alcohol in her system when she hanged herself in May, a...

$3 Billion in Fines for Illegal Marketing of Paxil, Wellbutrin and Other Drugs

Dr. Peter Breggin | Posted 07.08.2012 | Healthy Living
Dr. Peter Breggin

Although it is encouraging to see the legal system to some degree catching up with drug company malfeasance, there are a number of problems with the criminal and civil cases brought by the Department of Justice against drug companies.

Rat Study Links Chronic Stress To Common Mood Disorder

| Posted 06.27.2012 | Science

By Gisela Telis on 25 June 2012, 3:15 PM Stress really does mess with your mind. A new study has found that chronic stress can create many of th...

America's Vacation Deficit Disorder

William D. Chalmers | Posted 07.29.2012 | Travel
William D. Chalmers

We need an intervention to help us break the destructive treadmill-like cycle we are in of denial and continued harmful behavior. We need a vacation!

'Xanax' Nation? My Anti-Anxiety Meds Give Me Enough to Worry About

Kaitlin Bell Barnett | Posted 05.27.2012 | Healthy Living
Kaitlin Bell Barnett

Journalists love declaring that psychiatric medications symbolize some slice of the zeitgeist. So I can't say I was entirely surprised when I opened my mailbox the other day and saw New York Magazine's latest cover article proclaiming that this is the era of Xanax.

Faster-Acting Experimental Antidepressants Show Promise

| Posted 05.07.2012 | Healthy Living

By Ricki Rusting (Click here for the original article) Antidepressants restore well-being to many people, but sometimes at the cost of such side e...

Antidepressant Treatment During Pregnancy

Margaret Spinelli, M.D. | Posted 05.06.2012 | Healthy Living
Margaret Spinelli, M.D.

As a psychiatrist specializing in the treatment of women during pregnancy, I am regularly consulted by pregnant women, their families and their obstetricians about whether or not to use medication to treat a clinical depression during pregnancy.

Homeopathic St. John's Wort: Good for More Than Just Depression

Larry Malerba, D.O. | Posted 04.25.2012 | Healthy Living
Larry Malerba, D.O.

Popular herbal preparations of St. John's Wort have become an excellent first line of defense in mild depression for those concerned about pharmaceutical side effects. But did you know that a diluted homeopathic form of St. John's Wort is highly useful for a wide variety of additional health-related problems?

Alzheimer's and Psychoactive Medications -- A Controversial Decision for Caregivers

Marie Marley | Posted 04.18.2012 | Healthy Living
Marie Marley

Many people refuse to even consider having their loved on put on any psychotropic medication for any reason. And that's understandable. But today's medications, which can be given in doses that don't overly sedate patients, can also be effective and improve a patient's overall quality of life.